1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to reducing the power consumption of video display devices.
2. Background Art
Laptop computers, for example, have limited battery life, and therefore conserving power on such devices is particularly important. Display of video consumes substantial amounts of power in devices such as laptops. The degree of power consumption of video display devices is affected by a number of factors, including, display size, display clock rate, display resolution, brightness, display enhancements such as backlit display, type of graphic processor, connection between graphics processor and the display, etc.
Efforts to better utilize available battery power related to the display device include actively managing the brightness, backlighting, display clock rate, power-saving modes for the display, etc. However, such measures of active management can reduce functionality and/or availability of resources to the user.
Another technique to reduce power consumption and extend battery life is to maintain the interface between the graphics processing device and the display device at slower rates. However, when a particular amount of video data is transferred over the interface, the overall savings in power achieved by slowing the interface, if at all, may not be significant.
Video is generally transferred between devices in a frame-based format. For example, a video encoder would encode a frame of video and then transmit it. A video display device will receive and display an entire frame before data from the next frame is rendered and displayed. Sophisticated techniques exist for rendering the display of a frame on a screen so that various quality and performance criteria are satisfied.
What are needed, therefore, are methods and systems that reduce power consumption of video display devices that take advantage of the frame-by-frame nature of video data streams.